Obstacles:

Obscurity:

One of the biggest obstacles I see with the dissemination and adoption of big ideas is often their relative obscurity. If people don’t know about your big idea, product, or service, they cannot embrace it. People must know about the idea(s) you are advocating before they can evaluate them; and evaluation always precedes adoption.

Failure to communicate effectively can kill your big idea.

Clutter:

This problem is much easier to write about than it is to remedy. The level of clutter we encounter on a daily basis is mindboggling. The estimates regarding the number of commercial messages we receive in a day vary wildly, but there seems to be a general consensus that it is in the thousands! And, these numbers do not include the non-commercial messages we must process.

Face-to-face communications, text, and email still demand much of our attention. Newer channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and whatever comes next all contribute to the blizzard.

Chief Story Officer:

What can a leader do? Become the Chief Story Officer (CSO) for your team.

When you find a big idea, one you believe is worth sharing, you must become the voice for that idea.

Ideas with no voice are merely daydreams.

Once you have the big idea, begin collecting stories: big wins and near misses, failed attempts, and fabulous successes; and then share them! Be relentless – tell your stories over and over and over again. Each time you do, the viability of your big idea increases.

Do you have a comprehensive, multi-channel, long-range communications plan to support your big idea?

How might leaders give voice to big ideas, their own or the ideas of others?

174 thoughts on “Don’t Kill Your Big Idea”

Thanks for your insight and messages. i enjoy them and have used them with my management staff as well as adapted them to be used with my employees. The younger generation seems set on text and social media but I believe strongly in walking around and talking to my employees. i believe in listening and talking face to face as much as i can with my employees and that is not practical with our customers but letting them all know you care is a big factor in keeping an open line of communication.

I enjoyed your article today and it was the perfect timing. I have recently taken on the Innovation portfolio for our organisation and I know this is one of the big challenges of innovation – how to get your idea heard.
I am in the process of organising a hack-a-thon where we will bring together a group of people for all levels of the organisation and put them in a room with some problems to solve. There will be no rules and no hierarchy and at the end there will be a dragons den to decide the winning submission – we are excited to see what comes from it.
Keep the great articles coming

Great article. Far too often we share ideas and never follow up or keep them alive. They are left forgotten and then something happens which brings them alive again but as though they were never thought of. Keep the idea alive and be persistent.

Bringing unity in our communication and leadership is important. Often we have all the “trees” but lose sight of the forest and fail to communicate that to lead people forward. A good reminder. Enjoy reading how to do that better.

Hey, if it was the first 30 commentators who received a book I’m golden! 🙂

Good post and good point. It’s not easy to become a good storyteller though, at least that’s how I feel personally. Also I wonder if there are different occupations and situations where storytelling is more appropriate than others…?

Thank you so much for this post. It is our job as leaders to think big and inspire our team to make the dream happen. But I appreciate the part in your blog about evaluating those dreams. We should bounce our dreams off others for evaluation. The feedback is important.

The Chief Story Officer title is an intriguing idea and one worth the energy necessary. The space to tell a story versus just doing what’s next on the list is a constant challenge for me, yet we all know the power is in the story.

I work in the conservation world and we are really great at telling a story about why our work is important for wildlife or plants but we are HORRIBLE at telling the story of why it is important to people. I have been trying to tell this story to no avail for the last three years (many people don’t agree that we are telling the simplified story). It is extremely frustrating to see our work becoming more and more irrelevant but this post makes me optimistic that its still worth fighting for!

We are a small non-profit youth development organization and we see the need in today’s culture for a “Chief Story Officer”! Our team is going to have some serious discussion around this idea…Thanks Dan!!

I enjoy reading this blog, and always find nuggets of wisdom. You said “If people don’t know about your big idea, product, or service, they cannot embrace it.” … How do we get them to acknowledge they KNOW about it, instead of ignoring it to avoid making a decision?

Thanks for your daily inspiration! As a preschool director in a not-for-profit I find that when we are presenting new ideas for improvements, our board members want to see visuals of “The Big Idea Plan”!
Story Boards are simple but effective ways to communicate the big ideas!

Great post, Dan! I hadn’t thought of a CSO (Chief Story Officer) in the C-Suite, but what a great idea! Besides the story teller, you need an editor that can visualize the idea into a product for others to see.

AS a leader I have learned through time that one, if not the most important trait is that of being able to tell stories that relate my experiences to a particular challenge my staff is facing. Great post, everyday!

I’ve been guilty of counting failures as an idea/thought that is irrelevant or that doesn’t make an impact. I too need to be a better CSO. I need to be bold, put it out there and see what happens. Thank you for continuing to share your wisdom and challenge us.

Thanks for all the information you share, Mr. Dan – truly inspirational and yes,very good insight of becoming relentless to tell stories over and over and over again to make viability of big idea increases.

One of the things that has struck me most from the life of Jack Welch with GE is how he lived this principle – his relentless habit of repeating the vision and telling stories around it. It was a lifestyle fixation.

The story book analogy is well placed here. Whether it is our own idea or another team member’s, does the story have everything it needs to become a voice for the present and the future? If it one of the team member’s idea, what do we need to provide to empower them to succeed with the idea and bring it to fruition? Offer help and guidance, but in the end, then them tell the story and have the ownership. Then give praise. Leaders need to remember that they shine with the team does well, not just them. We achieve because of all of the chapters, characters, and plot settings in our story-not simply the lead actor. Thanks for the morning thoughts Dan.

I spent six years promoting the new concepts I/we created in our department, only to find out that two levels above me were not even looking at them. Then I was asked by top level management why we don’t innovate. I told my story about all the innovation we did. None of those old ideas moved forward, but I did, and the new ideas are on all managements radar. Story telling, and acting, are very important to promoting new concepts. not the only thing, but one of the door openers.

Love the title CSO! All too often we have a big idea but it gets lost in the day to day shuffle. I think we have all fallen into the lost project realm at some point. Persistence is key to being heard and making change. As always, your article was appreciated.

Great article! One thing we are trying to promote with our company’s culture is making employees feel like they CAN take a risk without fear of any sort of ‘mark’ against them if they fail. Employees need to be empowered to take risks with their big ideas, and a lot of that has to do with Senior leaders, or all leaders in general, supporting that.

While I agree with the Chief Story Teller encouragement, I’m reminded that part of the clutter we deal with is also satisfying the communication needs of those detailed people who want just the facts. They’re an important part of the team but their communication needs are different.

LOVE your wisdom. Appealing to emotions in a story seems like a productive way to bait the hook for communication. So ironic to me that with all the communication tools we have, communication seems to be more of a challenge than ever before. We struggle with our message. Appreciate Leadership Freak and share articles with our Leadership Team all the time.

Sometimes the simplest answer is best, as is the case here. If you don’t know the big story, you can’t effectively contribute. I think a complementary piece would be making sure that others’ stories are also being told, so that you have a consistent narrative & everyone moving towards a common goal.

Yes! Love the idea of telling a story versus just asking to give a presentation everywhere. We have started working on helping our leaders tell stories are part of the enterprise-wide effort to build stronger relationships and better collaboration. It has been fairly successful and I am excited to be a part of the effort to expand it further.

Great post-stories are empowering and when you give them life with actions it all starts to happen. With shared leadership you have to start with a story and get out of the way. Igniting the team and showing them the end goal help to build strong leaders and strong teams.

Big ideas often threaten the status quo. As such, they can encounter open, or worse, hidden opposition. Leaders not only need to champion new ideas, they need to recognize, confront and turn around the opposers.

Good info. One of the keys is the long term aspect. In some cases someone has a big idea and wants everyone to buy in right away. Many times ideas like these take time for people to digest. The information may need to be presented in different ways. It takes perseverance and finding the right way to tell the story to get the buy in.

Organizationally big ideas are treated like cancer – “kill them before they multiply.” The downside is the big idea people in our group either get frustrated or leave. The challenge we face is from the top down. So my job – keep pushing the top to think differently. It’s a painful struggle – count it all joy!

I love this because I have been telling my team that in the absence of a story, it’s human nature to take the information you know and make one up. We would rather control that narrative so it’s OUR story instead of the myths that might make sense to someone with missing details.

This is a great post that is timely as every is moving to “innovation.” I think the organizational culture has a big impact on ideas. Many times I see the people on the front lines with great ideas that are not fully explored due to their position in the organization. Leaders need to continually examine how ideas are generated and help remove barriers. I wonder how many innovative ideas are missed when they come from the “lunatic fringe.”

Great timing for this blog, as always! I am really hoping I win the book as I am embarking on some leadership development initiatives and this looks great! Love this blog, thanks for your relevant words!

Wow! I am a nursde educator. Two of our roles are Leader and Change Agent. This so exemplifies how we should promote our ideas and those of our institutions. As educators we are also Story Tellers but often they are other peoples stories. This reminded me to share my own ideas and beliefs. Thank for this today!

Big large scale efforts may be a curse in organizations with a lot of bureaucracy. I have worked both in public sector and private. What may work well for one sector may not work for another. In the public sector I found more success in small rapid incremental changes. There maybe an overall arching strategy but large intatives have a higher chance of failing because in public sector:
– burcratic organization is resistant to change
– consensus in public sector takes a lot longer,
– decision by committees sometimes slows progress
– changing priorities
– changing leadership
– staff seem to move from position to position more often
– fund reset every fiscal year could create an opportunity from the activities to be cancelled
– public opinion can change

I also I generally find leadership weaker in the public sector than the private sector.

I sometime wonder how much of my tax dollars have gone out the window because the government had to pay penalties for cancelled contracts or redo failed projects. In private sector people would get fired. In public sector there is less of that.

I would be interested in your view on how to measure the flexiblity / aglility of an organization and leadership. I believe the more flexible the organization is, the easier it is to adapt to change. Change is a key component to embracing any innovation or new way of working, whether it is lean and six sigma or digitization and mobile workforce.

I love the concept of the Chief Story Officer. Too often I think great ideas are told to some but eventually fizzle, so this is a great way to make sure the right people are getting reached with good ideas. Keep up the great work, I am looking forward to it.

Developing a vision for your organization also works better when you can clearly communicate a simple idea and illustrate it with stories. The book “Made to Stick” is a great resource on this topic, too.

It is so true that our minds are constantly multi-tasking and we may easily dismiss a great big idea if you don’t grab our attention the right way. You must come out loud and strong, with a clear message and a logistical plan that makes sense to help us envision this master plan. Communication in a way that makes sense is key.

Wow, that is a really good point. The storytelling puts wheels on the dream or idea. I struggle with telling the story. I am not sure if it is due to fear or uncertainty, but the idea cannot garner support if no one knows about it!

It’s important to create a culture where one is willing to share his/her big ideas and it’s best to start with small ideas that receive praise and encouragement to continue contributing that will eventually lead to the big one. Good post.

I appreciate this blog because in the work climate that I work in (Healthcare) calls for big ideas to meet our goals of service. Your blogs are often featured in our morning Huddle as our devotional. Would you consider compiling your blogs into a “calendar” book? That would make it super convenient to feature every morning. We appreciate you so very much, Dawn and team

You must also keep telling stories of IMPACT after the idea or change in process/thinking has been executed time after time after time. People have short memories and being a continual presence will finally breed retention.

Great post, thank you. Communication and skills associated with “effective story telling” is not just relevant to selling and sharing ideas; but, on a whole host of efforts that leaders have to deliver on.

I like the quote: “Big ideas which remain unknown are irrelevant.” While that is true, it seems to also say that communicated a big idea is not the force that gives the idea relevance, purpose, and a “what is needed” aspect. Some big ideas are not worth pursuing, or have come and are now gone or on the way to obscurity. The loudest voice shouldn’t be the winner. Sadly that is often the case.

I love the chief story teller. The consistent telling of your story will eventually cut through the clutter of the people who you need to hear your story. It will also disarm inconsistent argument of nay sayers!

I’d love to receive a free book. I work in an organization that values leadership and ongoing leadership education. We routinely discuss your leadership freak postings for takeaways and what we will do differently. Thank you for adding to my knowledge base.

It is amazing how much the “clutter” can get in the way of even articulating a Big Idea…the stuff that distracts and discourages can put off the capturing of that Big Idea until “tomorrow”. But one good conversation with another dreamer/ encourager can power through all that clutter, and can help give voice to tell the stories others (and selves!) need to hear!

THANK you for how much your daily post has changed my work, my relationships, and my life. Keep the good stuff coming!

I’ve had folks on my team that had great ideas, but unfortunately weren’t exactly the outgoing “be heard” type. I love the concept for any leader (note: not necessarily management) to become a marketing arm for the great ideas they hear and being purposeful about it. The only thing I’d add is to not wait for the ideas to come but instead try to create an environment that encourages them and provides intentional time / place to share them.

My initial reaction is that this truth is simultaneously commonplace yet sad. Others can’t read our minds and we often don’t express emotions due to fear or pride or ego. What if there is no reciprocity? I need to process more….and express love more! Thanks!

Really enjoy the blogs, some days they are exactly what I need to read. Currently my biggest challenge with my staff is trying to move forward with my big ideas when the struggle understand what I mean and why I am pushing hard for changes as they have never experienced anything like it in education before. (Joys of being in a new school.) An old saying I learnt years ago is, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” I will try harder to be the Chief Story Officer. Thanks!

This post reminds me of an idea I borrowed from the head of one of the most successful ski resorts in the US and implemented: Each Monday I host a meeting with a different representative from every department, so the group is different each week. We get to know each other and then I ask each of them to tell me a short story about one of their “Gold Medal Moments” – when they went above & beyond for the customer. Without fail, every single person is able to tell me a story. So now when I am talking to a group of employees about what it means to build a Gold Medal Performance Organization, I have a wonderful collection of stories to tell. (and please try this out in your organization!)

Dan, as usual, great thoughts. Two thing jump out too me in your post. They are “clutter” and “repetition”.

First, clutter. I can’t control the clutter that my listeners are enduring but I can very much control the clutter that I subject myself to. I think this will sharpen the clarity of my message and make it more likely to penetrate the clutter it competes with in my listeners ears.

For me the biggest clutter remover is to focus on ONE thing above all else and let that be the foundation and set the pace for all that follows. This one thing is to “sit at His feet and hear His word” before I move on anything else. This story is the Mary and Martha story of Luke 10:38-42. “Martha, Martha you are worried and upset about many things but only ONE thing is needed and Mary has chosen that”

Secondly, your encouragement to repeat the story is spot on. We need to repeat to the point we feel like a broken record and beyond our comfort level in order to ensure that the message sinks in. We need to stay the course and keep on message for a very long time in order for that message to become engrained in our listeners and become 2nd nature in whatever culture we seek to influence.

Thanks for you daily investment in my life through your thoughtful posts.

I found the assertion “evaluation always precedes adoption” to be very profound. It makes good, logical sense that in order for anyone to grab hold of an idea and decide whether or not they wish to support it, that the ‘seller’ of the idea must share enough about the dream, product, desired outcome, etc. to give people a chance to decide how they think or feel about the prospect…probably one of the most overlooked aspects of communicating and leading.

So true about sharing ideas. The other thing I’ve found is that by sharing your big idea(s) with others, you then can start refining and reshaping based on feedback, reactions, and others’ insights which are all valuable. An idea from one person might be great, but it can only be made better (either by being refined or even by solidifying that it’s already great) by additional input and even criticisms from others which may force the originator of the idea to question something they hadn’t thought of before. Until you share, that idea is in draft, raw form and it will never likely be feasible until you “test” it out on others.

“Chief Story Officer” was exactly what I needed today. I am going to take on a new role soon and it involves leading others in a new direction. I want to be the CSO telling the team’s story as we work towards a huge goal. I want to keep everyone that will be supporting us, (and those that we wish to solicit in supporting us), in the loop- in order to get them interested in what we are trying to achieve. And more excited as we work towards the win!

So true just finding the right platform these days or the right people to share your idea with is so hard. Iv been trying to get to key decision makers in the motor insurance side for so long. People won’t open their doors to listen

I have been appointed 2 months ago to manage a production team in a multinational cement manufacturing firm.
My first few weeks were a disaster, having come from managing a small team of less than 20 people, to a larger team of over 50 men was a complete nightmare.
Communication, was very poor within the team, people believe working in silos, hoarding knowledge to remain relevant.

I spent alot of energy making sure i break the communication gap. I normally have meetings with my direct reports in the morning and expect them to cascade to the guys under them but this didn’t happen.
I had to go out there, meeting with the guys on shop floor, participating occasional with them on their field works. This firstly did not just bring me closer to the guys to feel exactly what is happening at that level but also built some trust.
We have been having get together meetings over weekends, this has brought me closer to them and immediate families.
Now

. As an elementary school principal, I love the idea of being the Chief Story Officer. It can be difficult for some to build the skills to tell a good story. It has helped me to take some courses on presenting and story-telling, even going to several story telling festivals. Thanks everyone for the comments on this site. There are many insights offered to help us build our leadership skills.

It’s less about the CEO of an organisation reiterating their journey to staff. It’s about the journey of her / his people; their successes and even failures need to be appreciated. Failures – because they’ve given something a try “let’s aspire to inspire whatever our role and rank!” -My authentic words! (“,)

That is what I believed too… you think you have a big idea and you make stories around it.
If you don’t have buy in from say peers –
you say I will do it. A working prototype may
help our cause! But if majority of old hands
decide that they will not change; an idea with merit still dies a slow, painful, agonising death.